“MAN HAS NO INDIVIDUAL “I”
BY LOKESH
But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small “i”s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, “i”. And each time his i is different. just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man’s name is legion.”
― G.I. Gurdjieff
You are a crowd, a multitude. Osho
When I examine my list of things that I have Osho to thank for I have to say that introducing me to The Work of Gurdjieff is at the top of the list by far. After hearing from Osho about the influence Mr G had on his own work I read ‘Meetings With Remarkable Men’, which after reading several times left an indelible imprint on my emotional memory, because it is a remarkably moving book. My curiosity was tweaked. Thirty years ago, I was in a desperate long term situation and, seemingly by chance, I was given the Psychological Commentaries by Maurice Nicoll and thus began a process that is still ongoing today.
Fundamental to Mr G’s teaching is The Doctrine of the I’s. ‘How many I’s have we got in us?’ Ouspensky was once asked. He replied, ‘We have thousands of I’s in us, only because of the actions of buffers we do not see them as distinct, but retain our belief that we only have one ‘I’ that always acts and feels in the same way. This is imaginary ‘I’. It is this imagination that we only have one ‘I’, this imaginary ‘I’, that prevents us from changing.’
Mr O was asked on another occasion whether ‘I’s’ weren’t imaginary and he answered in so many words that ‘I’s’ were real beings in us, real persons, but because we did not see them we had the imagination of having Real ‘I’ ‘The ‘I’s’ are real,’ he said, ‘But the imaginary ‘I’ is imaginary. Each ‘I’ is a small living ‘I’ in oneself.’
After thirty years of inner study I can honestly say that Ouspensky was speaking the absolute truth. The study of the ‘I’s’ in oneself is a lifetime’s work. It is complex, fascinating and frightening when one realizes our real situation. We are not one. We are a multiplicity. Osho was doubtless more aware that most about the situation, yet he never went into overmuch detail about our predicament on this level . The question why is what forms this thread. It is something I have often pondered. I have came to a number of conclusions including that The Doctrine of the ‘I’s’ is a slow deliberate process, requiring a lifetime of personal study. It is no quick fix. Looking back on Osho’s work it was often a case of a non-bullock cart approach. Catharsis was central to much of Osho’s teaching and cathartic techniques like Dynamic Meditation were very much in the fore, at least in the early days. All good. Then comes witnessing. I took that a step further and entered the Advaita Vedanta School. Bottom line there is that as long as there is an awareness that you are witnessing you have not reached. In relation to the heart of Mr G’s work I suspect that Osho knew the majority of his sanyassins were not ready for it. I could say much more on the matter on this particular level but this will suffice.
What I like about Mr G’s Work is that when progress is made in terms of inner work you can see it clearly. We live in an increasingly complex and troubled world and The Work helps me to make sense of it. I am a complex being and so is everyone else. Our world is a Tower of Babel. Everyone is speaking a different language, but my familiarity with the Doctrine of the ‘I’s’ helps me understand what lies behind the apparent ball of confusion we are spinning around on.
The Doctrine of the ‘I’s’ is as ancient as man himself. It has been around for a very long time. During biblical times, Jesus was called to help a man who was possessed. When Jesus approached the clearly disturbed man he asked, ‘Who are you?’ A voice spoke through the man, ‘We are legion.’ We are all possessed by that legion. Most are completely unaware of the fact.
I am certain that had Osho wished to develop groups that used The Doctrine of the ‘I’s’ as a foundation he would have. But he didn’t. Yes, he had self-enquiry groups like Enlightenment Intensive, but such groups only scraped the surface of the matter. I can speculate that he understood this completely and wished to remain loyal to Mr G by not making a game out of it, from which his organization could have made money. Osho must have understood that, once an individual has The Work tools under his belt, they have all they need to set off on this most fantastic of journeys. No structure external to oneself is required. This is true spirituality, the great experiment that takes place in the privacy of one’s inner world, where commerce has no foothold.
This is, unlike much of Osho’s mainstream work, not something for the masses. It is for the few. Mr G taught that consciousness can be quantified. Consciousness is material. There is only so much of it at any given time in the world. This does not pose a problem for the earnest seeker because most people do not want their share of consciousness, content to sleepwalk their way through life, speaking as if they are a unified ‘I’, when in reality they are a multiplicity of conflicting ‘I’s’.
We are created as self-developing organisms. Teachings are sown into the world to show us what we have to do in order to recreate ourselves to evolve into our potential. People like American president Donald Trump are the anti-thesis of what I am talking about here. The general tendency today is to disregard the individual and to bring all human life under vast collective schemes of social security and so forth. This turns Man into a more and more state-dependent, state-controlled person, and makes him or her less free in the name of liberty. As such, we become beings who are told what to do and what to think, and left with a short-sighted vision, with the goal of humanity only in the future of time lying in some increasing mass-amalgamation and general uniformity spreading over the whole surface of the Earth. Everything will then be the same and nature will then be conquered, as they say. This does not augur well. As Socrates said, ‘Man is glued to his senses.’ Take a look around and see where that has brought us collectively.
On a more positive note I will leave you with something else Socrates said and I see it as directly related to the core of this thread. ‘When the soul returning unto itself reflects, it goes straight to what is pure, everlasting and immortal and like unto itself, and being related to this cleaves unto it when the soul is alone and unhindered. And then the soul rests from its mistakes and is like unto itself, even as the eternal is whom the soul is now in touch. This state of the soul is called wisdom.’
LOKESH
Scholarly yet wise.
It will be a good reciprocation if oshonews editors take this article of Lokesh, as editor of this site does quite generously with the contents from there.
Don’t know why you say this, Shantam.
Oshonews has no comments section, and we feel this is a major failing of their site, as no minority sannyas views are expressed there. That is reason enough to use some of their articles.
However, on the whole we find ourselves using the same material, like the stuff about Dr Saxena and his son, BUT these articles are not original to Osho News, in fact they come from Indian sources originally.
We doubt whether OshoNews would be interested in Lokesh’s article, as it would show too much thinking for oneself. But if they ever requested it we would certainly ask Lokesh if he minded, and if he gave such permission, then give them the right to publish it.
Parmrtha,
I said this as compliment to the class of writing at this site and your openness to get discussion worthy material.
In my observation, oshonews is like Daily Mail, sannyasnews Independent!
19 times you used “I” about yourself, Lokesh, and compared yourself to other sannyasins who are not ready for the great and special journey you are on.
Thank you very much, Lokesh, for this interesting post.
“On a more positive note I will leave you with something else Socrates said and I see it as directly related to the core of this thread. ‘When the soul returning unto itself reflects, it goes straight to what is pure, everlasting and immortal and like unto itself, and being related to this cleaves unto it when the soul is alone and unhindered. And then the soul rests from its mistakes and is like unto itself, even as the eternal is whom the soul is now in touch. This state of the soul is called wisdom.’”
Can you tell us where this is coming from?
SL, I came across the quote in the Psychological Commentaries. Somehow it struck me as profound and tying in with what I was writing about.
I appreciate your posted thread topic very much, Lokesh, more so. as it is a highly contemporary one for Digital Information Age, its consumers, its contributors, like ourselves, who are part of it all here in SN ´News´-Chat.
Crossing the border lines already in major scale to renounce our humanness in favour of algorithms, the ´Almighty’. And see where that has brought us, brings us – collectively!
Could well be that in Socrates´ time he was annoyed that man (how you quoted it that he should have declared) is terribly bound to his senses.
Some centuries later, I find myself annoyed thereabouts that an increasing majority of humans by now is losing their senses altogether, walking and also acting like puppets on electronic (invisible) strings, and are mostly not present where they are present (in the body).
Another kind of ´sleepwalkerism´, I would say.
What a genius like Mr. Gurdijeff would say today, I don´t know, but it´s for sure valuable to meditate about it.
(He would go – like other Masters of Wisdom – for an update, I presume).
Madhu
This says it all..
“There was a young man who said though,
It seems that I know that I know,
But what I would like to see
Is the I that knows me
When I know that I know that I know.”
Interestingly enough, just a few days ago , before this artlice from Lokesh came up I happened to be looking through `the Rajneesh Bible` ,whilst sitting on the toilet one day,( which is now retitled as “From Ignorance to Innocence”,) and found a delightfull piece where Osho was talking about the different `personalities` or parts of the mind that one can become aware of , he also mentions Gurdgieff of course , who seemed to focus on awareness.
Osho says;
“Just watch it; just watching it is such a great joy, such a great drama that one need not go to any movie. You can simply close your eyes and see the movie that continues there, with so many actors and so many actresses and everything is there that is needed — raw footage, unedited….
You have to drop all these personalities like clothes and you have to come to your utter nudity.
And from there is the beginning.
And then the second thing is very simple. The whole problem is with the first thing; the second thing is very simple. When personalities are gone, the crowd has left you, you are alone. Close your eyes, you will see who you are — because there is nobody else. There is only awareness of immense silence, of no object.”
“In aloneness, suddenly out of nowhere, comes the fragrance called enlightenment. You become illuminated; for the first time full of light, all darkness dispersed.”
The night is over, the sunrise has happened — and a sunrise that is never going to become a sunset.
OSHO: From Ignorance to Innocence, Chapter 13
Yes, SS, The Rajneesh Bible talks about the ‘I’ subject. In these pages, Osho sums up all his work. It is worth reading them.
In my opinion, Osho goes beyond G (moustache master), well ahead..:) XXX
Yes, it sure is a good read. I dipped into it here and there. Osho talks a lot of his childhood.
Not sure Shantam types would be so fond of those books, though, although they had created “Rajneeshism” as a way of getting Osho status as a religious teacher so that he could stay in the USA.
Osho clearly states in those talks that he has no wish for any religion or tradition to continue after he has left:
“I am not going to leave a tradition behind me.
While I am here, enjoy the moment.
Celebrate the moment.
Why be bothered for the future?
And remember one thing: anybody who tries, after me, to make a tradition is my enemy, is not my friend and is not your friend either.”
And
“You ask me, “Is there any possibility of your religion not being reduced to a cult?” Yes, there is a possibility, only one possibility – and that is that sannyasins go on becoming enlightened, so there is always a chain of enlightened people around.”
I am trying in every way so that you cannot make me…I go on doing everything that will prove that this was not a superman or a messiah or a tirthankara. I will not fit with any image. You cannot manage to make me extraordinary. Beware of the human tendency: one wants one’s Master to be extraordinary. But this is what leads ultimately to the death of religion.
You can save this living religion only so long as you go on meditating and you go on creating new flowers, new blossomings – so that you never become a desert; there is always some oasis. Just a single person amongst you is enough to keep the religion alive and prevent anybody from reducing it to a cult.
But please don’t call it my religion.
It has nothing to do with me.
It is simply religion.
You have to understand, as totally as possible, that just a pure religion has more possibility of surviving, because then you don’t put any boundaries on it.”
Hi Lokesh,
Cheers for kick-starting the discussion here again.
I think that the “Doctrine of the ‘I’s'” is less of an esoteric idea than supposed. For example, take what happened with Jung, in the early 20th century, whilst he was attempting to work with cases of multiple personality (which is a mental state characterised by at least two and often several distinct and relatively enduring identities or dissociated personality states that alternately show in a person’s behaviour).
He quickly realised that even `sane` people, including himself, were in a similar position, albeit at different points on the severity spectrum. This is how he came up with the idea of “autonomous complexes” which are kind of independent mini-selves within the psyche.
Introduce the idea of meditation, self-awareness and introspection into this way of seeing oneself and you have something very close to the “Doctrine of the ‘I’s'”.
The difference between Osho and Mr G seemed to me to be that Mr G wanted to create a “real I” by his (sheer hard) Work, whereas Osho seemed to be saying “let all those characters come and go and just be the pure awareness.”
For myself, I don`t seem to have either Mr G`s willpower or Osho`s laisser etre, but I do try to operate in the crossover between meditation and psychology, as I guess we all do.
.
Not long after I returned from Poona the first time I went through a protracted period, a year in fact, of being torn between a Swami Prem Arpana personality, and another personality, personalities based on my given name. Nightmare time really, but I got through it. Breakdown, breakthrough time really. Trial and error (Maybe given name Christian me, and mala and red clothes Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, hanging out with other people in malas and red clothes using Sanskrit names in Poona me. Not sure.)
When I ponder about this real ‘I’, I find that this ‘I’ does not exist at all & the ‘I’ which exists is very momentary but we collectively manage somehow to prolong/create it for our own survival which is co-dependent for the survival of the species.
K, there is nevertheless a feeling of “I exist” which seems to hang in there with more persistence than the coming and going ‘I’-dentities that are created to deal with social situations and so on.
I liked Alan Watts’s idea that the ‘ego’ is a convention, like the equator or longitude. You can`t actually see it and it doesn’t actually exist as a line on the earth, it`s just an idea that can be useful for orientation.
There`s a big magician somewhere creating endless ‘I’s having endless stories. I suspect that`s why everyone likes stories, literature and gossip etc.
Of course, that`s just another story. It could all be just looking through a glass onion.
“There`s a big magician somewhere creating endless ‘I’s having endless stories. I suspect that`s why everyone likes stories, literature and gossip etc.”
Yes, Frank, and this magician has produced a universe full of floating balls and galaxies, and this here biosphere of activity, that we call life.
Oceans , mountains and varied landscapes, and lots of interesting animals and creatures that roam and eat and fuck , and fight each other.
Somehow fits together with natures `balance`.
Humans – whats going on there?
Different bots – lots of activity in the neurons and electro magnetic pulses, has enabled these creatures to become intelligent enough to compose stories and literature like you say.
They also have a penchant for creating beats and music and the capacity for creativity is quite staggering.
But this `magician`- or is it a `dreamer` – this Grand `guvnor` – he has made these complex brain designs but has left out a general heart capacity amongst the species – is this intentional?
Thousands of years of road-building and wars?
Madame Blatvatksy wrote about a peacefull culture of non-violent meditators, the lengend of `Mu`, that was submerged under the great flood.
I can relate to “Alan Watts’s idea that the ‘ego’ is a convention, like the equator or longitude. You can`t actually see it and it doesn’t actually exist as a line on the earth, it`s just an idea that can be useful for orientation.”
Yes, Frank, there could be a magician somewhere, maybe this magician needs/wants to be invisible or perhaps we need to create an ‘eye’/'I’ for that to appear! Maybe G was talking about that ‘I’…Well, this I hasn’t yet been able to see that ‘I’!
K,
Seeing that ‘I’ may be as difficult as seeing your own eye!
Which would mean that you are it!
That sure is an interesting discovery, Frank!
The Mirror Effect
How the rise of mirrors in the fifteenth century shaped our idea of the individual.
By Ian Mortimer
http://laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/mirror-effect
That mirror stuff is interesting.
In writing, it gave rise to that kind of self-consciousness/awareness that created essentially non-religious creative writing, the rise of the novel and an explosion of poetry.
In art, the discovery/creation of perspective was also made possible largely by the use of mirrors (credited to Brunelleschi).
This, applied to engineering, also completely transformed architecture and then the whole constructed world
We tend to feel it has gone too far by now, with the rise of facebook culture and obsessive self-consciousness etc. where the reflection has become so dominant that the awareness of that which is being reflected is completely lost and forgotten!
The article really struck a chord with me, and I think that happens when I/we recognise something of our own lives, experiencing in what is on the page.
Mirrors are everywhere in different forms, part of our lives, influencing us like the moon influences the tides. Completely taken for granted.
Lokesh has quoted quite a few luminaries of philosophical religious traditions about the doctrine of I or I am not…
AND THEN?
Will Big Daddy be happy and issue a certificate, “You have reached the peak of wisdom. Congratulations.”?
It is quite an innocent and harmless fascination to get involved with ‘I’ and think I am just an ‘I’. Brain and body gets relaxed.
Shantam, there is no big daddy, or big mummy. Who cares about the peak of wisdom? It is enough to try and make sense of your life and lead a meaningful existence. All this seeking peaks and golden carrots business went out the window along with malas and orange robes. Fun in their time but no longer needed.
You’re jealous, Shantam. You have no inner life, you can’t join in the conversation, so you dismiss it.
Arpana, show me a single post of yours where even fellow-bloggers give thumbs up for your inner life. I don´t want to put you down but fact is you are like jingle tune among the songs on FM radio.
In general, I don´t like people who brag about their inner life, in real terms they are like crackpots who remove their inner clothing in public places.
I don´t think there is any instrument or scientific test to gauge people´s inner life.
I am happy to just participate at Sannyas News. I do not need to fool myself the site revolves around me.
Some good comments from the regulars here at SN. Right now, Ibiza is dead centre of thunderstorm alley. It is a great time for introspection. My short essay had been hatching in my mind for some time. Procrastination seems to be a new companion on the ageing path.
Frank says, “I do try to operate in the crossover between meditation and psychology.” I can relate to that. Having run the gamut of beyond mind practices I still live with the mind. Self enquiry is well and good but in my day-to- day the monkey chatters on and I have to deal with it and it is there that Mr G’s teaching comes in handy.
SN is a fascinating website. Amongst other things, it is a good place to observe one’s I’s at play, and of course those of the other commentators. The basic rule in G’s work is that whatever one sees in others corresponds to an I in your inner world. Sounds simple enough but it is a hard pill to swallow.
I was reading the other day how one must learn to let others pass through one’s inner world without harming them. I find this to be a great practice. If I have difficulty in letting this happen I stop and examine why. I find it remarkable that so few bother to sort their inner world out. Clean the house out, so to speak. We are after all working from our inner world, whether one realizes it or not. If you do not sort yourself out you will never be truly happy, no matter how much money you have.
Kavita was mentioning ego. In Mr G’s work, ego is rarely mentioned and is in many respects replaced by the word personality.
The aim of The Work is to create an amalgam of positive I’s. You might have heard Osho mention that we do not have a soul as such, simply by being a human being. It is not our God-given inheritance. A soul is something we have the potential to create and it is no easy task. Our greatest hindrances in obtaining this objective are negativity and laziness and taking life for granted.
Osho often said that he was a very lazy man. If you believe that, you will believe anything. Osho was the most creative man I ever met in my life. So, if you subscribe to the idea that there is such a thing as the lazy man’s path to enlightenment I reckon you are kidding yourself. Reaching our highest potential requires great effort, earnestness and stamina. I am sure many will disagree with that but this is my experience and therefore that is where I speak from. What others tell you has its place but ultimately if you have not worked for it I reckon it will have little real worth in your life.
Perhaps that is one shortcoming of the Sannyas movement, Osho made it look too easy at times…easy is right. I loved him for that but now realise that it is not so simple, and I do not see life as being that easy. I do not really think Osho’s life was that easy either. It was Poonjaji who brought the awareness of the master’s suffering to me. But that is another story.
Lokesh, what kind of personal experience has you got from G work? Have you been with him or have done some work in his school? Is there something more than bookish experience?
It is almost a fetish in Osho´s disciples to talk about Ramana´s work, about Zen and Sufis and whatnot; the small shops with low turnover attract them.
In the end it shows one thing, stuff in Osho´s store has good packing, high price and low quality, specially the staff is rude and arrogant.
Shantam, you need reminding that Osho made a point of stating that he blessed all genuine seeking on all paths (perhaps someone can supply the specific quote?).
I second Arps’s remark, 11.47am today.
@ SD:
“And the door that you have fallen in love with is the golden door for you. Now there is no other door if you have fallen in love with this door. And you will find others entering from other doors but when you reach to the very centre of existence, you will all be meeting there in tremendous love and brotherhood. Somebody will be a Hasid and somebody will be a Zen monk and somebody will be a Tibetan lama and somebody will be a Sufi and somebody has come through sitting silently and somebody has come dancing – but in deep brotherhood at the centre all seekers meet.”
Osho
The Art of Dying
Chapter 4
Chapter title: Let It Be So
Really uplifting.
If it is USP of Osho, there was no need to ask about some quotation search?
Anyway, SD, why you are so eager to get some kind of sanction from Osho? You think Osho is a boxer in a nightclub who will stop your entry because you are carrying the aura of this one and that one?
Shantam, both your paragraphs are irrelevant bullshine.
The second one misses the point entirely, as I wrote in response to your overwhelming negativity re anything other than your extremely narrow concept of Sannyas, which in fact has degenerated into lttle else but an ongoing politician’s rant, and as such is deeply unimpressive.
I remind you that you wrote:
“It is almost a fetish in Osho´s disciples to talk about Ramana´s work, about Zen and Sufis and whatnot; the small shops with low turnover attract them.”
Still, I suppose some people have to try to organise a master’s work into yet another religion – and in so doing fuck it up entirely.
Shantam, if you want to fix your car and you are not a mechanic you use a manual. The manual is useless if you just read it and do not apply the information. That is what happens with too much reading Osho books. You can fool yourself that Osho’s understanding is yours. It is not.
This applies even more so with reading about Mr G’s Work because the intellect loves it. There is a need to intellectually understand what it is about. This is an early step and many get stuck there. You can then take it on board by feeling it. If you do not put into practice what is being transmitted it is a complete waste of time. If you do you can spend a lifetime developing virtually unlimited potential.
In speaking about chakras or different energy centres in the human organism the work says a very interesting thing. It says that all of our centres are open. Our problem is that our lower centres are covered in muck and it is therefore that we cannot hear what is being transmitted from higher planes of reality. This makes sense.
So, Shantam, I have answered your question. Now I ask you what spiritual practice are you involved with that can help open you up more, help you evolve etc? How does this practice relate to Osho?
If we don´t dig each other the joy of the discussion will be lost. With this intention I raise cross questions, specially with those whose words radiate maturity and toll of labour. To play ping pong with you, Lokesh, is a matter of pride.
About my spiritual practice, let me share a post I wrote minutes ago but saved it in the folder instead of posting at facebook. I thought it will unnecessarily push the buttons of a woman with whom I am in the process of coming out of entanglement. If something is unsaid, I can add later.
Almost every year I meet someone who tries to impress with some healer, guru, mini-guru and similar workers, and when I ignore, the replies are, “You are afraid, you are too much in your Indian mind, you are not appreciating your inner potentials, you are not really spiritual.”
It is no wonder, most of the someones who talk about their shamanic healers or spiritual teachers are women! Among all such people, I get inspiration from a nun in a church i visit once in a while. She is always there adjusting flowers and participating in the Mass. The steel-like resolve in a thin, small woman and her soothing smile; quite often I close my eyes and bow down.
I close my eyes and bow my head also for some other kind of people, they are in fitness studio and saunas. Even without clothes, they feel covered with healthy radiation.
Listening to Osho and Sikh hymns in musical format at home and sitting around an hour every day in some church is part of my daily diet.
Surely, writing is another format of practice.
I know my talk is answerable to my walk; word by word, step by step.
Shantam, you sound like a bhakti type, devotee, a heart man. In all my time with Osho I rarely felt like a devotee. I am not in need of calling someone my master. I enjoy spiritual teachers, gurus, shamans and witch doctors and witches, but only if they are sexy.
Lokesh, I did not mention ‘ego’ in reference to Mr. G, it was in reference to Alan Watts.
Yes, Kavita, that was already clear.
Cheers, Lokesh, & thank you for this thread!
What is the consequence of these floating ‘I’s?
The consequence is whatever you think you are is not true.
Don`t you just love it how people simply appear out of the void with perfect answers to life`s ultimate questions in two lines?
That`s Enlightentertainment, SN style!
@Frank. 24 January, 2017 at 11:35 am
”When the disciple is ready the master appears.”
Satchit comments, “The consequence is whatever you think you are is not true.”
Deep.
Ehm…does that mean the one that thinks isn’t true also?
Illusions…illusions…:)
@lokesh
Who thinks? The mind?
You have a mind? Then it is true.
To get back to the discussion…
Lokesh, you write:
“The basic rule in G’s work is that whatever one sees in others corresponds to an I in your inner world. Sounds simple enough but it is a hard pill to swallow.”
It is a perspective of enormous value, for certain. And as you say, definite results come from attempting this kind of practice (again similar to Jungian ‘withdrawing projections’).
Nevertheless, there`s a catch with this.
What you say here can only be taken provisionally.
If it`s taken as an ultimate, unshakeable truth, some problems can arise.
For example, if someone is aware that you believe this, they could act badly towards you, knowing that you will seek the fault in yourself, not them. This can be an effective manipulation. This is pretty much what Sheela did.
Dodgy therapists and gurus do this kind of stuff all the time.
Thinking of G…
Did it apply to him when he threw Crowley out of Prieure and said (reportedly) he was dirty etc. Was he really acting out an internal struggle, fighting with his inner self there?
Or was he just doing something not psychological, but practical and impersonal, like cleaning the toilet?
Maybe “Doctrine” is a word that implies the fixedness of the propounded truths a little too much.
How about:
Georgie G and his ‘The multiple ‘I’s’ rap’
It`s a bit looser.
Sounds dope to me!
Frank,
Sometimes instinct says “be careful. Keep him/her at arm’s length.” I don’t believe it’s always projection. Often, sometimes, but not always.
Also projection is two way, but not always of equal measure. Sometimes projection finds a good hook, or target, but not always.
I think that`s my point.
‘Everything you see in others is really in yourself, projected’ is an idea to be experimented with.
As an unchangeable diktat it has flaws.
It`s not unlike ‘You create your own reality.’
It can be useful way of seeing things, but not if you end up believing that children are having their limbs blown off and dying of AIDS because they have ‘created their own reality’!
Words are (s)words. They cut both ways.
Also got used a lot to avoid taking responsibility for anything, as in “That’s your projection”, which may have eventually been the catalyst for me realising it wasn’t always so.
We had a discussion once about the difference between judging/condemning and exercising a bit of discernment. Which seems not irrelevant in this context.
…which reminds me…Trainspotting 2 is out at the end of the week…must check that out.
T2. I cannae wait.
Here is one video. Maybe it fits with the undercurrent of the article, Freedom from I, enlightenment etc., Sannyas style.
Who knows, few years from now people will talk about Dolano, Samdarshi, Rajneesh in the same way as G, J, O, UG and P for Papa ji?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXK08w1C39E
”When the disciple is ready the master appears.”
May be one should create a new version of usual stuff preached by Indian Masters:
“When the master disappears disciples appear in China, Russia and India.”
Internal Family Systems
The IFS model has 5 basic assumptions:
The human mind is subdivided into an unknown number of parts.
Each person has a Self, and the Self should be the chief agent in coordinating the inner family.
Parts engaging in non-extreme behavior are beneficial to the individual. There is no such thing as a “bad part.” Therapy aims to help parts discover their non-extreme roles.
Personal growth and development leads to the development of the internal family. Interactions between parts become more complex, allowing for systems theory to be applied to the internal system. Reorganization of the internal system may lead to rapid changes in the roles of parts.
Adjustments made to the internal system will result in changes to the external system and vice versa. Therefore, both the internal and external systems need to be adequately assessed.
There are three distinct types of parts in the IFS model:
Managers are responsible for maintaining a functioning level of consciousness in daily life by warding off any unwanted or counterproductive interactions, emotions, or experiences resulting from external stimuli.
Exiles are most often in a state of pain or trauma, which may result from childhood experiences. Managers and firefighters exile these parts and prevent them from reaching the conscious level so that proper functioning and preservation are maintained.
Firefighters serve as a distraction to the mind when exiles break free from suppression. In order to protect the consciousness from feeling the pain of the exiles, firefighters prompt a person to act on impulse and engage in behaviors that are indulgent, addictive, and often times abusive. Firefighters may redirect attention to other areas such as sex, work, food, alcohol, or drugs.
Managers and firefighters play the role of Protectors, while exiles are parts that are protected.
http://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/types/internal-family-systems-therapy
Ozen Rajneesh book ‘I to I’ may be very interesting to many here!
It is unique and very valuable in this thread.
http://ozenrajneesh.com/i-to-i/